


the ring

by OrphanBlue



Category: The Rookie (TV 2018)
Genre: Anxiety, Claustrophobia, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:23:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22906942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrphanBlue/pseuds/OrphanBlue
Summary: oneshot inspired by Tim finding Lucy's ring in The Dark Side, but not mentioning that it was how he found her.
Relationships: Tim Bradford & Lucy Chen, Tim Bradford/Lucy Chen
Comments: 25
Kudos: 157





	the ring

**Author's Note:**

> As most requested on tumblr, here is Tim gives the ring to her when she most needs it - she’s feeling down and lacking in confidence, so he gives it to her to let her know it was her own quick thinking that saved her

Lucy was beginning to get out of breath. They had been chasing the guy for blocks, on foot, in the LA heat. Criminals were always so inconsiderate. And this guy had to do parkour or some shit, the way he moved so swiftly over all obstacles in his path. He had a record, mostly drugs, but now he had moved up to assaulting women on public transport. When they had gotten the call, and moments later Tim had spotted him, they had been in an area with warehouses, and the sun had still been up. But the guy, Jamie Willard, had ducked into an empty warehouse, and lead them off through buildings, along alleyways and somehow gotten them into a construction site, so that the sun was now well into setting. Lucy was tired, but it amused her just a little to hear, by his breathing and little mutterings, how pissed off Tim was. Bradford. They were at work. She should call him Bradford.

They turned a corner and found themselves up against a wall.Both looking down, Lucy and Bradford saw a small tunnel cut into the wall at about knee hight. Perhaps it was going to be turned into cooling ducts, or ventilation or something. Whatever the tunnel would become didn’t matter, because Lucy could see bottoms of Wilson’s sneakers disappearing into the dark of it. He was a small guy, slight enough, and definitely slimy enough, she thought, to fit through.

Lucy turned to look at her training officer. A sudden fear was creeping into her. Bradford would not fit in that tunnel. His shoulders were too broad. It would be up to her.

“We can go around.” Bradford said quickly, already making a move to turn back the way they had come.

“No.” Lucy insisted. “I’ll take too long. We don’t even know where that leads.”

He gave her a strained look. Clearly concerned, it was a lot like the looks she had gotten on her first days back, full of worry and pity for the victim. She didn’t linger to analyse the look though, nor wait for his argument, she just dove into the tunnel, like any good officer should.

The dark welcomed her back with ease. It swallowed her up into it’s silence and cold. The world was gone again, and she was back inside tight metal walls. Even Tim’s voice calling after her sounded immeasurably far off. She couldn’t make out what he was saying, but every word that found her sounded strange. It sounded like it was coming from her own head, imagined and longed for. Just as she had imagined and longed for his voice, any voice in the barrel. The barrel.

Lucy launched herself back out of the tunnel so fast she would have landed on her ass of Tim hadn’t caught her. She shook, and forced herself to open her eyes wide, to take in the little light offered by the setting sun. She breathed in great gasps of air, and felt the rough ground beneath her. Beneath, not above.

“You okay-“ Tim’s voice came to her loud and real now. For a moment she thought he was asking if she was okay, but then she heard him saying it again. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

Lucy scrambled to her feet, looking at her partner a little confused. What he had just been saying, the way he had been saying it, it sounded the same as-

“We should go around.” They both said at once, and launched off after their guy.

—

Lucy glowered down at her drink. It was ginger beer. She didn’t drink alcohol anymore, at least, not when she was out. After their shift they had all headed to the usual place to get food and drinks and let off the pressures of the day. Lucy hadn’t really been in the mood, but she had come into work with Jackson, and he had insisted on them both going out tonight. Him and Nolan we both full of pride and celebrating the day's arrests. They had tried to regale her with the details, but she slipped away the moment they had looked away. She knew none of them meant to make her feel bad, and really it wasn’t their fault. She had never mentioned how her guy had gotten away, only that he had.

Someone sat down opposite her, and Lucy looked up to see Tim Bradford staring intensely at her with those damned blue eyes. She knew what he was gonna say before he said it.

“It’s not your fault.” He actually sounded like he believed it.

“Yeah, it is,” she sighed “he’s out there assaulting another woman because I couldn’t climb through a tunnel.”

“I couldn’t get through it.” Tim offered.

“You couldn’t _fit_ in it. I just couldn’t handle it.” She turned to look over at the others, still laughing and talking animatedly.

“You know none of them keep count.” Tim said, following her eye line.

“None of them were taken. They didn’t need rescuing.” She tried not to sound so weak and sad as she said the last words.

“Bullshit.” Tim almost laughed, and Lucy turned back to look at him in surprise. “I bet you couldn’t count the times Harper and Bishop have had to rescue Nolan. And West had that whole thing with being shot at when he started.” He waved his hand a little as if to imitate bullets flying through the air. 

“That’s different.” She tried to look away again, but those eyes wouldn’t let her. “They weren’t drugged. They weren’t shoved into the trunk of a car.” She choked a little and tears started running down her cheeks. She looked down at her drink again and whispered “they didn’t need digging up. Dead in a barrel.”

She stared at the stains on the table, waiting for Tim to say something. Some pointless words of comfort. But there was just quiet, then some small shuffling sound. Something dropped lightly on the table in front of her. Lucy stared at it. It was a ring. A gold ring. Her gold ring. They one she had removed and thrown surreptitiously onto the ground as she had climbed into the barrel. The thing she had thought about for hours alone in that hell, praying that someone would find it, but which in the time since being rescued, she had almost forgotten about.

“How-“ the word was barely out of her lips, and was probably just an inaudible whisper, when she was interrupted.

“You got yourself out of that barrel. You did.” His voice was forceful. Hard, like when she had just started and he had been drilling those lessons of his onto her mind. “I never would have found you if I hadn’t seen this ring, your ring,” he picked it up and held it in front of her face, before dropping it into her instinctively outstretched hand, “glinting in the sunlight.”

Lucy looked up at his face again, her fingers closing around the ring. “You found me?”

His face softened immediately. He had a look that she had only seen on him once or twice. It wasn’t quite embarrassment. He nodded.

“And you pulled me out of there?”

“Yes.” He nodded again.

“And you gave me CPR.” It wasn’t a question anymore. “You held me, when I came back to life. You held me while I cried and-“ She couldn’t speak anymore for tears as memories of that moment came flooding back to her. His arms around her, his voice whispering that it was okay, she was okay.

His hand came up to her face to wipe the tears away, and it lingered, cupping her cheek as he stared into her eyes. They stayed like that, and though she couldn’t speak, Lucy tried so hard to communicate her gratitude. She willed it to move through the warm skin of her cheek and into the softness of his touch. And she was sure she could feel something in return.

There was a buzzing chime. They both shuddered away from each other, startled back into the world by the text alert. Lucy hadn’t felt the buzz, but she looked down at her pocket anyway, then, realising it wasn’t her phone, she looked back up at Tim. He was staring down at his phone, and Lucy took the chance to wipe away her tears. His expression was emotionless as he read. Then he smiled.

“The night shift got our guy.”

“Thank god.” Lucy sighed. She was beginning to feel a little embarrassed by this moment of intimacy with her training officer.

“Yeah. So, shall we go back to them?” He asked, gesturing back to the others.

“Yeah alright. But, umm. How come you’ve not given this back to me sooner? And what, have you just been carrying it around with you the whole time?” She was feeling more herself already, and naturally that meant teasing Tim Bradford.

“Don’t,” he groaned awkwardly “don’t read anything into that.”

Lucy laughed as she slipped the ring back on her finger.

**Author's Note:**

> I live for comments so get to typing.


End file.
